adaq said:

Or do like I do - play Savage Worlds. There are several quality conversions available for free (as if you really need them with SW), and the rulebook is cheap. SW is an awesome system, played a variety of games with it.

FFG lost me with this one, I was hoping for something original, not WHFRP in space.

BrashFink said:

Not sure I'd call it elegant. Different, sure. But mechanically it's the same thing, just shifting the burden. One roll vs two - makes the player feel like their own enemy.

As difficult a barrier the custom dice are becoming for new gamer entry, I believe one solution will be to enable those who want to to generate the dice in the easiest means possible. This means more than just "we gave you a label sheet". One of the VERY FIRST products they put up on the site, other than a Character sheet PDF, NEEDS to be a printable LABEL SHEET format of the dice. And NO, that does NOT mean a hi-rez replica of the sticker sheet in the book, that means a sheet configured to print on your average Avery or other office-max style sheet of label paper. Like a 2" x 4" shipping labels sheet.

I have severe reservations on the use of stickers and blank dice. The blank dice are NOT readily available, it took hours of searching to acquire a reasonable set. I refuse to trust stickers on pre-cut faces of existing dice, and hold the adhesives suspect till proven durable. Manual dice face placement will be prone to imbalance and the "real dice" better be **** rapid in the offing, as I am suspicious of the long-term play durability of the labels for wear and tear, environmental factors, and simple gamer sweat.

Put the tools in the gamers hands earlier and easier to overcome the self-created barriers to entry. Cross reference charts for classic dice are a stopgap patch, and you know it. (so do we) 1 Sheet of labeled dice will NOT be enough as gameplay and playtesting progresses. Even worse, when the inevitable happens and some of the Beta owners throw up their hands and chuck the game on Ebay or their local FLGS/used book store, the dice labels WILL NOT be transferred with the leavings.

jamesewelch said:

heh, that would be me, over in the D20Radio forums and the OSRGaming forums.

Speaking of which….need MOAR dice?

If you need more dice labels than the included sheet will generate, go to

http://osrgaming.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=98&t=2383&p=28474#p28474

and DL for use on Avery 48863 Shipping Label sheets. Dice sides are marked with borders to ease the cutout process.

Contact me if you want the .docx to target specific template dice.

Character sheets and the replica of the dice sticker sheet from the book are up on the SWFF site

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=218&esem=4

Of course, unless you are using an aftermarket uncut 8.5x11 sheet of adhesive backed print stock, and have the laser eyes of a CSI crimelab (yellow sheets, I'm looking at you) good luck cutting the die faces. Bordered sides (takes 5 minutes with MSPaint) makes the cutout process sooooooo much easier.

Ah, excellent forethought then. Die Edges marked they are. Carry on! (the other contentions still stand tho!)

Callidon said:

I'd say having a nav computer keeps the Difficulty die from being upgraded to a Challenge die. I think the setting makes it clear that if you don't have a nav computer making the hyperspace calculations you're gonna find yourself inside a star quickly.

Were it my game, there's be no advantage die added to the pool because the base roll assumes it's there.

selderane said:

So…add a challenge die or leave that line item off your mental checklist as you build the dice pool? There's nothing stopping you from building a dice pool how you want. There may be some rough guidelines or suggestions in the fiinal product but in the end it comes down to what make sense in your game at the time. I whipped that example right out of my behind so it may not be a perfect one. There's also not a specific benefit that I've seen about having Chewbacca on your crew :-)

Maine said:

But heres a nuance:

The proficiency (yellow) dice are more helpful to the players than the challenge (red) dice are harmful. Its subtle (about 1 failure less on a challenge die than a proficency die has successes), but it is there. The game slightly tooled in the favor of whoever it is rolling the test.

I gotta say, I'm excited to see how this can turn out. In theory, its possible to fail a test, get a threatened condition, but have rolled 3 triumphs (crit successes). So basically you fail horribly, but somehow manage to turn the odds in your favor.

Or the reverse, Succeed, get the advantage, but suffer from 3 despair (crit fail) rolls.

Or a mix of the two fail the test, get an advantage, get 3 triumphs and 3 despairs (those things don't cancel out). Of course, this is relying on a test having quite a high amount of skill backing it, opposed by a very difficult check, and rolling a highly particular value on 6 d12s. Not to mention net failures, and enough advantages. Still, in any given dice pool there are quite a few ways things can turn out.

In other words, these dice definitely provide us with better "resolution" in terms of how many discreet possibilities we can roll. The test will be to see how effective the rules are at showing the difference between 2 net successes and 2 net advantages, or 2 net successes and 1 net advantage

My only issue with the dice is that they don't seem to be for sale anywhere and the sticker sheet in the back of the book is only a temporary stopgap measure. Stickers on dice or notorious for their lack of durability.

Once the dice are available I will buy them, I love dice, the sound of them rolling on a nice walnut dinning room table; the feel of them in my hands. I have aroundf 8 or 9 gallons of dice, I have sets of dice in my car, backpack, work locker, game store locker and suitcase.

No electronic dice for me or allowed at my tables.

Also, coming from a Shadowrun background of RPG gaming, I gotta say I like how skills/attributes are handled with dice pools. In SR you often could wind up with something where a character was basically trying to use a skill with little training, but still have a high dice pool by having a high base attribute (or vice versa). This system does an interesting job of rewarding a fairly consistent improvement of both skill and characteristic over time.

KommissarK said:

It's actually this bit that concerns me: Rolling a bunch of dice and everything coming to a screeching halt because you can't figure out what the roll actually means.

selderane said:

The book has a fairly well written out section for how advantages/threats/triumphs/despairs can be handled. Also, since advantages/disadvantages cancel out, there are only:

Success with an advantage - complete what you're trying to do with a benefit

Fail with an Advantage - Fail the goal of the test, but set it up to be done later

Succeed with a disadvantage - Succeed, but take longer than you hoped, set yourself up for difficulty later

Fail with a disadvantage - Fail at what you were trying to do and suffer later

Succeed with neither - Simply succeed

Fail with neither - Simply fail

Then account for crit successes and crit failures (do what you were trying to do spectacularly, but suffer a major consequence, that sorta thing).

In combat there are pretty well laid out tables for how advantages/disadvantages can be applied.

Finally, part of the point is to get the players involved. Crowd source the interpretation of the dice. If some other player makes an excellent interpretation of what the dice could mean, go with it. The point is, have fun.

Example: "I am shooting at the stormtrooper from cover"

Dice pool: 3 agility, 2 skill, no boosts, no setbacks (probably some, but keeping it simple), short range, so one difficulty die

Roll 1 ability, 2 proficiency dice, 1 difficulty die

Result: 4 advantage rolls, 1 success, 1 failure

Response: "You just barely get off a shot at the stormtrooper, but narrowly miss anything important. You do manage to shoot the gun out of their hands (3 advantages spent). You sigh a breath of relief as you at least hit something…. (1 advantage spent, get back 1 strain)"

There are alot of different ways that could of been handled:

Recover 4 strain, recover 2 strain and get a maneuver

Negate the stromtrooper's defenses till next round

Give allies boost dice

The list goes on. Much of this really should get player input, with the GM just applying final say on what is actually going to fly.

FULONGAMER makes some very cogent points, and I would second them wholeheartedly.

Stickers are a stopgap measure and if you apply them poorly they're not even that.

Using the conversion chart in the book is not a good idea. When you wanna introduce players to a new, symbol based dice mechanic, it's always best to do so completely and at once, not a little here and a little more there when the dice eventually come out.

FFG, I hope you're listening. We need those dice NOW. Either they or for the Dice App to also work on Windows machines. Come on guys. You want us to test your game, give us the PROPER tools with which to do so.

I have been playing RPG's for over 20 years and I must say that Shadowrun with its dice pools is one of my all time favourite systems. I'm a big Star Wars fan and have every Star Wars RPG book, through WEG and WOTC. I cannot stand D20, so never played WOTC but I could understand it at least. I have just received Edge of Empire, looked at it and feel like throwing it against a wall. Why oh why did you have to follow the terrible latest edition of WHFRP. Until I find a way of converting it to a reasonable number based system I won't waste my time playing it or introducing my players to it. These dice are just unnecessarily confusing.

I will not argue with the people that don't like the dice, I will just say this:

I have been roleplaying for around 17 years, I have played nearly every system I could get my hands on, (certainly not every system, but enough to get a good idea of what is out there) and Warhammer Fantasy 3rd edition is my single favorite system in roleplaying. I love WHFRP3, and I love Edge of the Empire, I love them because of the dice, and I love all of the tools that you get with WHF3.

If you don't like them, that is your choice, but there are those of us that do, and we are grateful to have them. Some people like apple juice, some like Orange juice. If it is not your thing, please just let it go, and let those of us that want it have this one without having to hear all of the complaining.

I will gladly support any game that makes use of this system or these custom dice.

Callidon said:

5 times? Try 7 licensed commercial ones…

WEG: 1E, 2E, 2R&E, LARP
D20: CRB & RCRB
Saga D20

Plus there are at least 4 homebrew rulesets floating the internet with fully developed rules.

And two universal systems with close pastiches…

And then there are powersword psionicists in the Spacemaster setting… and it's easy to do them in Space Opera. SO even has flying wedge capital ships.

Its really sad the dice mechanic is coming under such attack…why is a new mechanic so scary? Traditional numbered dice have some serious flaws…and while FFGs approach may not be perfect (nto to say it isn't…I haven't run through it enough yet) at least they're trying

mjprogue1 said:

mjprogue1 said:

Because some people just like to ***** and moan about how they (or their players) can't be uber-awesome on every single roll, that they can't game the system the way the can most pass/fail based game systems to ensure their success on every single roll they make of a given type.

And there's a few people, not just here but on on other official forums (particularly the "big-box" companies) who are willing to be downright hostile to the developers/designers when such folks are willing to take time out of their day to explain "hey, here's a look at some of the thought process that lead us to this system." I think the Pinnacle Forums are the only place that I've routinely seen PEG mainstays like Shane Lacy Hensley, John Goff, and Clint Black routinely post, but that's because the PEG boards are a friendly community that understands and apprecaites the work these folks have done.

Me? I love the dice system, and I really enjoyed reading Jay Little's articles about how the EotE dice system came into being. Sadly, I doubt we'll get any kind of follow-up given the harrassment he got from some people and *****-fests that erupted over on the main EotE forum over Jay not spilling all the beans in one go (guess those people have never heard of "industry secrets")